Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 27, 2025
He was like a brave man who has received a stunning blow, but who continues to fight until he has gradually regained his position. Gouache could no more have relinquished Faustina than he could have abandoned a half-finished picture in which he believed, any more than he had given up the attempt to break away the stones at the Vigna Santucci after he had received the bullet in his shoulder.
With these words Gouache bowed as though he would be gone and stood waiting for the princess's last word. But before her mother could speak, Faustina's voice was heard. "I cannot tell you how dreadfully we feel papa and I at having been the cause of such a horrible accident! Is there nothing we can do to make you forget it?"
"Concerning what, my friend?" inquired the great man, rather absently. "Concerning everything, Eminence," answered Gouache "concerning politics, religion, life, death, and everything else which belongs to my career. I am going to enlist with the Zouaves." The Cardinal looked at him for a moment, and then broke into a low laugh. "Extremis malis extrema remedial!" he exclaimed.
"My dear old friend," he said good-humouredly, "have you known us nearly five and twenty years without discovering that it is our peculiar privilege to be ignorant without reproach?" Gouache laughed in his turn. "You do not often make sharp remarks but when you do!" Giovanni left the studio very soon, and went in search of Spicca.
"Of course your Eminence can send me out of Rome tomorrow, if you please," answered Gouache, with perfect unconcern. "But the portrait will not be finished so soon." "No that would be a pity. You shall stay. But the others what would you advise me to do with them?" asked the Cardinal, his bright eyes twinkling with amusement.
There was no link wanting in the chain, and the denials made by Corona and Anastase could not have influenced any man in his senses. What could a woman do but deny all? What was there for Gouache but to swear that the accusation was untrue? Would not any other man or woman have done as much? There was no denying it. The only person who remained unquestioned was Faustina Montevarchi.
On the other hand he was outraged by the words that had fallen from Montevarchi's lips in the first moments of anger and astonishment. A painter, a man with a profession, without a name! Gouache was too human not to feel the sting of each truth as it was uttered.
Then a hall, which led to the study, where books and papers were piled on the shelves of a book-case that enclosed three quarters of the big black desk. Two panels were entirely hidden under pen-and-ink sketches, Gouache landscapes and Audran engravings, relics of better times and vanished luxury. On the second floor, a garret-window lighted Félicité's room, which looked out upon the meadows.
A dark-green carpet in passably good condition covered the floor; three or four broad divans, spread with oriental rugs, and two very much dilapidated carved chairs with leathern seats, constituted the furniture; the walls were hung with sketches of heads and figures; half-finished portraits stood upon two easels, and others were leaning together in a corner; a couple of small tables were covered with colour-tubes, brushes, and palette-knives; mingled odours of paint, varnish, and cigarette-smoke pervaded the air; and, lastly, upon a high stool before one of the easels, his sleeves turned up to the elbow, and his feet tucked in upon a rail beneath him, sat Anastase Gouache himself.
"Monsieur Gouache!" he exclaimed in surprise. At the same time he made the men move on with their burden. "You know him, papa?" whispered Donna Faustina as they followed together. "He is a gentleman? I was right?" "Of course, of course," answered her father. "But really, Faustina, had you nothing better to do than to go and look into his face? Imagine, if he had known you! Dear me!
Word Of The Day
Others Looking